With maids, nannies, and cooks, many Qataris sit in their air-conditioned villas all day getting fatter and ignoring serious health problems

DOHA - There seems to be an ever clearer relation between the social habits of the Arab world and a number of malaises climbing to frightening levels among Qatar's population.

In the Emirate, 20% of the population suffers from diabetes according to figures released by the Qatar Diabetes Association (QDA). Over 215,000 people have been diagnosed as diabetic in Qatar, and the disorder is affecting more and more children and not just adults.

The quality of life and daily habits of the Arab world tend to foster the spread of this illness often stemming from obesity, which affects over 40% of the population according to the National Health Strategy 2011-2016. The Emir's government is ever more concerned and is trying to hold in check the unhealthy eating habits of Qataris, attempting to force fast food restaurants to write the number of calories on every dish they serve.

Obesity, diabetes and hypertension are also the cause of over 500 new cases of kidney problems reported every year by the Hamad Medical Corporation of Doha. Every year over 7,000 patients are hospitalised in the nephrology ward of the Hamad Medical Hospital, and over 2,500 are on a waiting list for kidney transplants: the figures are significant when taking into consideration the fact that Qatar has an overall population of about 1.5 million inhabitants.

This report seems the direct consequence of the country's social habits. Sports are a problem more than a form of entertainment. The traditional attire, a long white tunic with the keffiyah for men and the abaya (a long black tunic) for women, make playing almost any sport nearly impossible and obliging a compromise between cultural and religious traditions and the possibility to conduct a healthy life and engage in physical activity.

In a conservative country with the highest rate of mosques per capita in the world, many would opt not give up their traditional habits for a run or a football match. Most people do not spend much time walking in the streets, in part due to the high summer temperatures which make a normal stroll an exhausting effort, and in part because it is considered degrading. Most of the population get around exclusively by car.

In addition to making physical activity difficult, the traditional attire prevents sun exposure and leads to another dysfunction, that of vitamin D deficiency. According to a study by the Hamad Medical Hospital in Doha, 90% of those involved in the study suffered from this deficiency due to a lack of exposure to the sun's rays. In an interview with the Qatari press, Doctor Mohamed Khanjar of the Hamad Medical Hospital urged the population to expose their faces, calves and hands to the sun for at least 30 minutes per day - being the only parts of the body able to be revealed without giving rise to religious or social problems.

Due to their personal choice or that of their families, Muslim women avoid sports leading to contact with men or in their presence, and so many gyms and sports centres become off-limits. Another obstacle to sports is Ramadan, an entire month set aside for fasting and the avoidance of food and water before sundown. During Ramadan most of the population sleep during the day, with the iftar beginning at sundown: large feasts at which many end up eating so much they need to be taken to hospital casualty wards, with a record high almost 8,000 cases of indigestion recorded at the Hamad Medical Hospital emergency room solely in the first week of Ramadan 2011.

In this sense the habits and customs of the Arab world foster an increase in the rate of diabetes within a population that is steadily putting on more and more weight and living a sedentary lifestyle. Another traditional practice leading to disease, in this case of a genetic type, are marriages between members of the same family. In Gulf countries marriages are often arranged between families, causing cousins and relatives to marry each other. These marriages often result in the birth of children with serious genetic disorders, including Down Syndrome. According to the Center for Arab Genomic Studies (CAGS) there are over 250 types of genetic disorders in the United Arab Emirates, the country seeing the fifth highest rate of inter-family marriages, with half being between members of the same family.

The true tragedy linked to this cultural habit are the cases of children with birth defects, In Qatar, about 19,000 children are born every year, and the Paediatric Surgery Department of Doha's Hamad Medical Corporation carries out about 3,000 paediatric operations every year, including over 200 on children born with serious birth defects. This is why at Qatar's First International Paediatric Surgery Congress and the 12th edition of the Pan-Arab Paediatric Surgeons Association Congress there was discussion on the surgical procedures for birth defects, as it is the main problem in the sector.

(ANSAmed) - DUBAI - Dubai is known and appreciated for its tolerance towards the almost two hundred different nationalities that visit and live in the state.

But the there is a gray area in which certain questions have remained unanswered, and this is starting to cause problems for the 'locals', as well as others. Hashtag #Dubaidresscode, tweeted by two young Emirati girls, has led to a public debate to which the press has dedicated complete pages, asking for ''individual common sense'' as well as a clampdown on ''indecency'' by the authorities.

Many say that there are laws, but that they are not enforced. One would expect to find a clear dress code in the Muslim-Arab United Arab Emirates; it is unlikely to see women shopping in Qatar, Kuwait or Saudi Arabia with a low neckline or wearing a miniskirt. But the situation in Dubai is different. The emirate is more tolerant to attract foreign professionals and technicians, indispensible to build and manage the country.

Foreigners may ''feel at home'' in Dubai, but this policy is now starting to show its downsides. Some Emirati citizens feel suffocated by the foreign residents, grown to over 80% in numbers, but the current situation is also a problem for the foreigners who risk being jailed for revealing too much skin or drinking in the wrong place.

Posters have been placed at the entrance of shopping centres, asking people to ''dress respectfully.'' Pictures of tops, shorts and miniskirts are crossed out by a diagonal red bar. But this message is too vague: how short can a skirt be? And a sleeve? What kind of demonstrations of affection are tolerated in public? And only for married couples? Who is allowed to drink, where and under which conditions? Tourists and foreign residents don't know the exact answers to this questions. That way they may offend the local culture or worse, legal steps may be taken against them, leading to consequences ranging from imprisonment to deportation.

People need more information is the most wide-spread comment.

Brochures must be distributed when people enter the country, leaflets must be available in hotels and bars and the country has to collaborate more closely with travel agencies. Others say that people who live in Dubai need to be more tolerant, and that there must be more ''clarity'', ''surveillance'', with the Emirati authorities enforcing the law.

A 24-year-old man in Dubai has been sentenced to a year in prison and subsequent deportation after his gay relationship was discovered when his partner fell from a window.

According to Emirates’ newspaper the National, the man’s lover had fallen to the ground from a fourth floor window and suffered injuries to which he was to succumb in hospital. The Filipino man died last September after telling a passer-by who came to his aid that he had been thrown from the window by his partner, a 24-year-old Belgian man.

But the Belgian told police his partner had thrown himself out of the window having locked himself in the kitchen after an argument. Rather than pursue a murder charge, the case was referred to the Dubai Misdemeanour Court, which sentenced the Belgian man to a year in prison for having had a gay relationship with the deceased man.

In April, a Dubai court sentenced a Scottish man to three years in prison, followed by deportation, after he was discovered having consensual sex with a man near a petrol station one night in 2011 February. A man who had been sleeping in his car nearby awoke and witnessed the act.

Article 177 of Dubai’s Penal Code imposes imprisonment of up to 10 years for consensual gay sex.

AFP - If you are a 30-year-old Emirati woman and still single, then you've have missed the marriage boat. By UAE standards, you are now considered to be an old maid.

The problem, authorities in the Gulf state say, is that more and more women fall into this category: some 60 percent, according to the latest statistics, raising concerns among officials and sparking online debates as to why. The issue has been the focus of discussions for weeks at the Federal National Council, the country's appointed consultative body, where members are scrambling to find a solution to what they believe could be a serious demographic problem.

"This is very worrying," FNC member Said al-Kitbi told AFP, adding that there are now more than 175,000 Emirati women who are over 30 and unmarried. Though he conceded that being a "spinster" is "not a bad thing in itself", he argues that the demographic consequences of these women not having children is the real problem.

The United Arab Emirates is home to more than eight million people, only 950,000 of them UAE citizens. The rest are foreign, and young Emirati men are increasingly choosing to marry them instead. The latest government statistics show that at least 20 percent of UAE men are marrying non-Emiratis. The reasons behind this growing trend of spinsterhood are not entirely clear. UAE planning ministry statistics show that in 1995, only 20 percent of women over 30 were unmarried. By 2008, that figure was 50 percent.

Some evidence suggests that excessively high dowries are preventing men without the means from choosing a spouse. The latest survey by the UAE Marriage Fund, a government institution that provides financial assistance to those who want to marry but cannot afford to, showed that 87 percent of respondents blamed high dowries for low marriage rates among Emirati women. The government has imposed a $14,000 ceiling on dowries, but many families still demand much more -- in some cases over $135,000. "One of my friends is still paying his dowry bill and he's been married nine years," said Ali Mansouri, 30.

A woman walk past a window display in a gold market in Dubai.

To address the rising costs of marriage, the government has ordered that each Emirati man who wants to marry be given $19,000 -- but on condition that it is his first marriage. However, the Marriage Fund will make an exception for men who married women who cannot conceive. In this case, the fund will give the man money to take a second wife.

In the UAE, as in many Muslim countries, polygamy is sanctioned by both religion and the law. The Marriage Fund also routinely organises mass marriages to help cut costs and reduce the burden on individual men seeking a wife. There are also other reasons why Emirati women are not getting hitched before 30: they are opting for education and a career before settling down.

Take Mansouri: he is looking for a wife but says he prefers that she not work. And if she insists, he would rather that she do so part-time only. "Most men who succeed in their lives have wives who do not work, or do so from home," Mansouri said. "It's impossible to reconcile work and family life."

A survey of 200 medical students at the UAE University showed that 57 percent of respondents believed a desire to pursue higher education and a career were the main reasons why UAE women are not marrying before 30. The students, however, said they would not classify a woman as an "old maid" until she is 32.

"We're a little lost between tradition and modernity," said Wafa Khalfan, a single Emirati in her twenties. "Many girls are pretty and all grown up but they can't find a spouse," she said, adding that "if liberal they're considered easy, and if they're conservative, men think they're too uptight."

A store employee folds clothes inside a shop at a traditional market in Dubai.

FNC member Kitbi says that the problem could be "the girls themselves, as they prefer to complete their university studies and work rather than get married." He said it also seems that young Emirati men "prefer a woman who does not work."

Tribal traditions, meanwhile, have made an already difficult situation worse. Some families refuse to marry off "their younger daughter before the first-born," while still others will not allow their children to marry into a family of "lower social status", Kitbi said. Some of the most interesting statistics from a separate survey of 200 medical students show that many men and women believe polygamy may be the solution. Some 73 percent of those surveyed said encouraging polygamy was a reasonable solution to the spinster crisis -- and 59 percent of women surveyed agreed.

For Emirati writer and journalist Al-Saad al-Minhali, however, polygamy is not the answer. "This is not a solution," she said. "Marriage is a personal choice and should not be used to satisfy a national agenda."

Briton says she was raped in the UAE - but gets fined for drinkingby Loveday Morris Thursday, 6 December 2012

Desert paradise: In recent years, more and more Westerners have been caught out by Dubai's westernised exterior - the city-state is Muslim. Alamy

A British woman who was allegedly kidnapped and gang raped by three men in Dubai has been prosecuted for drinking without a licence, throwing a spotlight on the United Arab Emirates’ archaic legal system, which rights groups say does not do enough to protect victims of sexual assault.

The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, claims she was raped repeatedly by the three men who filmed the attack after they lured her into their car as she returned from a night out with friends. After reporting her ordeal to the police, the 28-year-old found herself in the dock because she admitted she had been drinking earlier that night.

Human Rights Watch has called on the UAE to improve its judicial practices for rape victims, saying those reporting crimes too often end up being charged themselves.

Lulled into a false sense of security by the drinking culture encouraged in the five-star hotels that line the shores of the oil-rich Emirate, expatriates often find themselves on the wrong side of the country’s strict laws. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office says British nationals are more likely to be arrested in the UAE than anywhere else in the world.

However, the legal system’s treatment of victims of sexual crimes has drawn particular condemnation. “In the UAE, there have been multiple cases over the past few years where the state has charged women with criminal offences after they have reported rape,” said Samer Muscati, a researcher in the women right’s division of Human Rights Watch. “When it comes to seeking justice for sexual violence, women in the UAE still face formidable and often insurmountable barriers.”

In 2010, the case of an 18-year-old Emirati – who was sentenced to a year in prison for illicit sex after she reported that she had been gang raped by six men – drew international outrage. Dr Rima Al Sabban, an assistant professor at Zayed University who specialises in women’s issues, said that the system can discourage women from reporting rape. “Potential rapists can take advantage of this, knowing that the woman is in a weak position and might be afraid of being prosecuted,” she said. “Women become double victims.”

The woman in this latest case had been drinking for six hours at the Rock Bottom Cafe, a local bar known for its cheap drinks, with its own kebab kiosk for exiting revellers. A Pakistani taxi driver who picked the woman up at 3am testified that she was “totally drunk” and fell asleep on the back seat. The woman, who works in a managerial position, asked to stop at a cash point, but after failing to withdraw money she was unable to pay the fare when she reached her building in the upscale waterfront community of Jumeirah Beach Residence.

The taxi driver said a red Hyundai then pulled up, and two men got out. They said they knew the woman and paid the fare. “I saw her sitting in the front seat next to the driver. After that I drove away,” he was reported as saying. The woman says she was then taken to an apartment where the men repeatedly raped her, dragging her back as she tried to escape. “I noticed one of them filming me and I begged them to let me go but they ignored my pleas and laughed at me,” she told the court, according to The National newspaper.

The victim’s 26-year-old French flatmate said the woman returned home at around 8.30am and appeared “confused”. She took her to a police station to report the assault. Two 20-year-old Iranian men are on trial for the assault, while the third has not been traced. They deny the charges. The men’s defence lawyer claimed that the woman had fabricated the claims, saying: “She watches a lot of action movies”. First Corporal Marwan Salem, who investigated the incident, said one of the defendants had said he had been scared of kidnapping “a British woman” but had been convinced by his co-defendant that she would be too drunk to recognise them, Emirates 24/7 reported.

The woman says she drank three glasses of wine. Drinking without a liquor licence is technically illegal in Dubai, though the document is never asked for at bars and hotels. She was fined 1,000 dirhams (£169).

Britons who fell foul of UAE laws

Veins Acors, 35, and Michelle Palmer, 37, were charged with unmarried sex and public indecency after having sex on Jumeirah Beach in July, 2008. The couple were sentenced to three months in jail, which was later suspended on appeal.

Ayman Najafi, 24, and Charlotte Lewis, 25, were each sentenced to one month in prison in 2010 after being accused of kissing on the lips in a restaurant. The pair maintained they exchanged a peck on the cheek solely as a greeting.

Businessman Steven Sherriff, 43, was jailed for six months after being accused of pinching a woman’s backside in a bar. Sherriff successfully appealed the verdict but was left in financial ruin after amassing legal bills of up to £70,000.

Rebecca Blake, 29, and Conor McRedmond, 27, were jailed for three months and fined over £1,000 after allegedly having drunken sex in the back of a taxi. The couple denied the charges of unlawful sex and DNA tests later confirmed their innocence.

RAS AL-KHAIMAH, United Arab Emirates (AP) -- Bikinis and briefs are no longer welcome on some sands in the United Arab Emirates.

Authorities in Ras al-Khaimah, the northernmost emirate in the UAE, have posted signs on public beaches warning of possible fines for revealing swimwear such as two-piece bikinis for women and brief trunks for men.

The Abu Dhabi-based newspaper The National reports Monday that the move followed complaints from local families who didn't like sharing the sands with tourists showing too much skin. The emirate is located about 100 kilometers (60 miles) northeast of Dubai.

The UAE hosts a patchwork of different social mores among its seven semi-autonomous emirates, ranging from conservative to relatively liberal. Dubai for example urges "respectful" attire but rarely objects to outfits such as miniskirts or bikinis.

A sculpture representing people carrying the Olympic rings stands on November 11, 2012 outside the International Olympic Committee headquarters in Lausanne.

AFP - Greece has pulled two ancient statues from an ongoing Olympic Games exhibition in Qatar in a dispute over nudity, a culture ministry source said on Tuesday.

"The statues have already returned to Greece," a culture ministry source told AFP, adding: "Organisers in Qatar wanted to cover up the statues' members with black cloth. So they were never put on display, they went back into storage and returned on April 19."

The statues -- an archaic-era Greek youth and a Roman-era copy of a Classical athlete -- are both nude, the manner in which Olympic athletes competed in antiquity. Greece's junior minister for culture Costas Tzavaras had travelled to the Qatari capital of Doha for the opening of the exhibit on March 27, saying it opened a "bridge of friendship" between the two countries. According to the culture ministry, Greece has contributed nearly 600 exhibits from the National Archaeological Museum, the Numismatic Museum and the Museum of Olympia, birthplace of the Games.

The Doha exhibit runs to June 30. A similar exhibit had previously been hosted in Berlin. Greece has long wooed Qatar to entice investment in its flagging economy from the energy-rich Gulf emirate. In January it was announced during a visit by Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras that Qatar planned to invest up to a billion euros ($1.3 billion) in a joint fund with Athens to bolster the recession-hit Greek industry.

The emirate has also rejoined a public bidding competition to develop the former Athens airport, one of the prized sites of Greece's privatisation drive. And last month it was reported that the emir of Qatar had purchased the privately-owned Ionian Sea islet of Oxia.

Marte Deborah Dalelv from Norway, 24, talks to the Associated Press reporter in Dubai on Friday, July 19, 2013, after she was sentenced 16 months in jail for having sex outside of marriage after she reported an alleged rape. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) -- A Norwegian woman sentenced to 16 months in jail in Dubai for having sex outside marriage after she reported an alleged rape said Friday she decided to speak out in hopes of drawing attention to the risks of outsiders misunderstanding the Islamic-influenced legal codes in this cosmopolitan city.

The case has drawn outrage from rights groups and others in the West since the 24-year-old interior designer was sentenced Wednesday. It also highlights the increasingly frequent tensions between the United Arab Emirates' international atmosphere and its legal system, which is strongly influenced by Islamic traditions in a nation where foreign workers and visitors greatly outnumber locals.

"I have to spread the word. ... After my sentence we thought, `How can it get worse?'" Marte Deborah Dalelv told The Associated Press in an interview at a Norwegian aid compound in Dubai where she is preparing her appeal scheduled for early September. Dalelv, who worked for an interior design firm in Qatar since 2011, claims she was sexually assaulted by a co-worker in March while she was attending a business meeting in Dubai. She said she fled to the hotel lobby and asked for the police to be called. The hotel staff asked if she was sure she wanted to involve the police, Dalelv said. "Of course I want to call the police," she said. "That is the natural reaction where I am from."

Dalelv said she was given a medical examination seeking evidence of the alleged rape and underwent a blood test for alcohol. Such tests are commonly given in the UAE for alleged assaults and in other cases. Alcohol is sold widely across Dubai, but public intoxication can bring charges. The AP does not identity the names of alleged sexual assault victims, but Dalelv went public voluntarily to talk to media.

Dalelv was detained for four days after being accused of having sex outside marriage, which is outlawed in the UAE although the law is not actively enforced for tourists as well as hundreds of thousands of Westerners and others on resident visas. She managed to reach her stepfather in Norway after being loaned a phone card by another woman in custody. "My stepdad, he answered the phone, so I said, that I had been raped, I am in prison ... please call the embassy," she recounted. "And then I went back and I ... just had a breakdown," she continued. "It was very emotional, to call my dad and tell him what happened."

Norwegian diplomats later secured her release and she has been allowed to remain at the Norwegian Seamen's Center in central Dubai. She said her alleged attacker received a 13-month sentence for out-of-wedlock sex and alcohol consumption. Dubai authorities did not respond to calls for comment, but the case has brought strong criticism from Norwegian officials and activists. "This verdict flies in the face of our notion of justice," Norway's foreign minister, Espen Barth Eide, told the NTB news agency, calling it "highly problematic from a human rights perspective."

Previous cases in the UAE have raised similar questions, with alleged sexual assault victims facing charges for sex-related offenses. Other legal codes also have been criticized for being at odds with the Western-style openness promoted by Dubai. On Thursday, Dubai police said they arrested a man who posted an Internet video of an Emirati beating a South Asian van driver after an apparent traffic altercation. Police said they took the action because images of a potential crime were "shared."

In London, a spokesman for the Emirates Center for Human Rights, a group monitoring UAE affairs, said the Dalelv case points out the need for the UAE to expand its legal protections for alleged rape victims. "We urge authorities to reform the laws governing incidents of rape in the country," said Rori Donaghy, "to ensure women are protected against sexual violence and do not become the targets of prosecution when reporting crimes."

''A gang of foreigners is using the QMA as though it were their own personal feud'', Al Arab newspaper seethed in an editorial against QMA, which is also reportedly reimbursing the employee and his partner's housing expenses.

This is the latest episode in an ongoing clash between Qataris, who number almost 300,000, and foreigners, which makes up 90% of the population. ''This is what happens when you pay too much attention to foreigners and the freedoms they are granted'', one commentator wrote.

A woman holds her mobile as she walks past a coffee shop in the Saudi capital Riyadh on June 17, 2013.

AFP - Jaber and his girlfriend flirt the day away, never wasting a minute to sweet-talk and dream of a future together, but like most Gulf Arab youths they can only do it virtually.

In the United Arab Emirates and all across the conservative Gulf countries, dating is unacceptable among nationals while arranged marriages are the norm.

To beat the segregation imposed by a stern society, young men and women meet through chatting applications available on smartphones. Sitting in a coffee shop in a luxurious Abu Dhabi mall, the love-struck Emirati young man holds a tea cup in one hand while the other one is busy typing love messages on the keyboard of his BlackBerry. "I saw her at the movies. I asked an employee there to hand her my BlackBerry PIN code," Jaber recalls with a grin the day he met his girlfriend. "I didn't really expect her to add me to her contact list, or for such a love story to evolve between us," said Jaber, who is in his 20s.

But it did and the first cyberspace encounter took place two months later when the young woman mustered enough courage and linked up with Jaber via Skype. It was a short meeting, said Jaber, who staunchly refused to reveal his girlfriend's name because making their relationship public would trigger a scandal in their conservative society. That first Skype date was enough "to affirm our love," said the university graduate. Eventually he convinced his beloved to meet him in secret and now the couple are considering the next step -- namely should Jaber request a meeting with her father in line with tradition and formally ask for her hand in marriage.

Men look at a mobile as they sit in a coffee shop in the Saudi capital Riyadh on June 17, 2013.

"Despite the modernisation in the United Arab Emirates, families still hold on to their traditional conservative values," says Jamila Khanji, adviser of research and studies at the Family Development Foundation in Abu Dhabi. "Families still arrange their children's marriages, even though they have now become more flexible by allowing the engaged couple to meet, or accepting longer engagement periods to give the couple better chances to get to know one another," she said.

But while this is the case in the UAE, considered one of the Gulf's most liberal countries, it is nearly impossible for couples in neighbouring Saudi Arabia to meet as the ultra-conservative kingdom strictly prohibits mixing between the sexes. In a cafeteria at the entrance of a shopping mall in Al-Tahliya street, one of Riyadh's most vibrant districts, dozens of young men look on as fully veiled girls in high heels and designer handbags walk past and head towards the seating area reserved to women and families only.

In oil-rich Saudi Arabia it is nearly impossible for men to openly approach a woman but thanks to an easy access to the latest technologies including mobile phone applications, they can indeed meet. By switching on WhosHere, a smartphone application which is popular in the kingdom, a young man sitting at the men's section of the cafeteria could contact girls sitting in the families' section. "I can see that 16 girls have showed up on WhosHere and I can connect with any one of them," says Ahmed, who like Jaber declined to give his surname. Before such applications, men would throw at the girls pieces of paper with their telephone numbers scribbled on them.

But the Saudi telecom authority warned in March that it would ban applications like Skype and WhatsApp if providers failed to allow authorities access to censor content, according to an industry source. Internet messenger application Viber was briefly blocked in June in Saudi Arabia, while BlackBerry nearly got banned in 2010. Authorities cite security concerns to justify their actions.

A man checks his mobile at a coffee shop in the Saudi capital Riyadh on June 17, 2013.

Although smartphones have become an integral part of dating in the kingdom, the relationship does not develop into marriage, users say. "None of my friends has married a girl he met in this way," said Ahmed. Qatari Alanood has fallen in love with a friend of her brother, but could not reveal her story in a society that shames women who dare voice their feelings. "I communicate with him on Skype," she said, speaking to AFP via Twitter. "It's a hopeless love story."

A 16-year-old student at a girls' school told AFP that Emirati classmates -- not allowed by their families to talk to boys -- use BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) to contact members of the opposite sex. On BBM, users randomly add contacts whom they start talking to. "Then they move on to Skype and Facebook." They sometimes get to finally meet face-to-face, but in most cases the short-lived relationship ends with a click, she said.

Kuwait to conduct ‘gay tests’ to bar LGBTs from entering the Gulf7 October 2013By Joe Morgan

Kuwait is to conduct 'gay tests' in order to bar LGBT people from entering the Gulf.

Kuwait is to conduct ‘gay tests’ to bar LGBT people from entering the Gulf region, it was revealed on Monday.

According to director of public health Yousouf Mindkar, health centres will taking stricter measures in order to detect gay people. This will mean LGBT people will effectively be banned from Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. Gay sex is already banned in all of the Arab countries.

‘Health centres conduct the routine medical check to assess the health of the expatriates when they come to into the GCC countries,’ he told local daily Al Rai. ‘However, we will take stricter measures that will help us detect gays who will be then barred from entering Kuwait or any of the GCC member states.’

It is not yet known what these ‘gay tests’ are or will involve. Gay rights activists have told GSN they are concerned it could be the infamous anal probe ‘test of shame’ that are prevalent in Lebanon. In Kuwait, male homosexuality is punishable for up to six years in jail. If they are under 21, gay men can be imprisoned for a decade.

In recent years, Kuwait has seen several ‘morality’ campaigns that have targeted the LGBT community. In 2012, police officers arrested two men for allegedly having gay sex in a café parking lot. Speaking to GSN, a Kuwaiti transgender activist has said: ‘While many countries and cultures are going forward in legal and social acceptance of their LGBT communities, Kuwait is going backwards. Our country is regressing both legally and socially, sexual orientation and gender identity is increasingly talked about by politicians and the media as an “epidemic” that the country must get rid of.’

Two trans men working for the government in Bahrain have been given initial approval for gender reassignment.

The lawyer acting on behalf of the two said the High Administrative Court had referred them to a medical examiner. This is expected to lead to them being allowed to undergo gender reassignment surgery abroad, and to be legally recognised as male. Both parties sought permission to undergo the surgery abroad, but needed the approval of authorities in order to have legal recognition of their gender identities.

Speaking to the GDN, their lawyer Fawzia Janahi said both of the men had gender dysphoria. She said: ”The court ruled that they will be allowed to see a medical examiner. This is just a start for them to be able to live their lives normally.” Both will be asked to see the medical examiner before and after the surgical procedure. “The medical examiner will note down their current situation before they undergo a sex change operation abroad. They will then be brought back to the examiner, who will inspect them for a last time before their medical documents are submitted to the court. The medical examiner does not choose if the two women will undergo a sex change operation, he only examines them and records their medical situation.”

According to reports, Ms Janahi is the only lawyer specialising in gender identity cases in the region, and successfully represented two other trans men in 2005 and 2008, both seeking gender reassignment.

VIENNA (AP) -- An Austrian woman has returned home from Dubai nearly two months after she filed rape charges that led to authorities there briefly jailing her and taking her passport.

The 29-year-old arrived late Thursday. Foreign Ministry official Michael Linhart said Friday that it was unclear whether she still faces charges in Dubai of having sex outside marriage.

The woman told authorities Dec. 1 that she was raped by a Yemeni citizen in a hotel garage. She was subsequently jailed for three days and her passport was confiscated as police weighed whether to charge her with consuming alcohol and having extramarital sex.

A Norwegian woman was briefly jailed last year for similar reasons and sentenced to 16 months in prison, but was allowed to leave instead of serving her term.

MANAMA, Bahrain -- Two men who dressed in drag and worked as gay prostitutes told a judge they should have been jailed for three months and not six after they had their appeals rejected.

The Bahrainis, aged 19 and 20, would charge between BD100 and BD700 to have sex with male clients, according to court documents. They were arrested after police received a tip-off that they were wearing women's clothing, make-up and wigs while they waited for clients in a coffee shop. They also advertised their services by posting pictures of themselves on photo-sharing social networking website Instagram.

Both men pleaded guilty to prostitution and homosexuality in the Lower Criminal Court, which earlier convicted them. They then lodged an appeal against their sentences at the High Criminal Appeals Court, which was rejected on Tuesday. The defendants told the leading judge he should have reduced their sentences to three months because others convicted of the same crime were only jailed for that amount of time, they claimed.

Commotion

However, after they started causing a commotion at the appeal hearing, the leading judge ordered them to be quiet and said if he saw them again he would "jail them for two years".

The 19-year-old told prosecutors that he had always felt like a woman since he was nine and went to seek medical help to no avail. "Since I was nine I felt like a woman and gay," he told prosecutors. "I then started to have gay sex with a lot of men, but I felt bad. I went to the doctors, but nothing changed. My case developed and I started having more sex and dressing up as a woman, using wigs, makeup and female clothing. I started to meet men in coffee shops and started getting money for sex. I met with Qataris and Saudi men, who paid up to BD700 to have sex with me."

Both defendants were earlier acquitted of misusing social media networks by posting provocative pictures of themselves in women's clothing. The pictures were attached to court documents as evidence.

Vienna/Istanbul (dpa) - An Austrian woman who says she was a rape victim was sentenced, in absentia, to four months in prison by a Dubai court Monday on charges of having sex and drinking alcohol, the Austrian Foreign Ministry reported.

The 29-year-old Austrian student had reported to Dubai police in early December that she was raped by a 27-year-old Yemeni banker in a hotel garage. The woman had been detained for three days and stripped of her passport before being allowed to return to Austria in January. She has since not returned to the conservative United Arab Emirates.

The man was also handed a two-month sentence for consensual sex on Monday.

The case is similar to that of Norwegian Marte Deborah Dalelv, who was sentenced to one year and four months in prison in 2013 in Dubai for having made a false police report about being raped, for extramarital sex and for drinking alcohol.

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